Someone I know – who doesn’t follow the Yankees at all – asked me to explain the Mutant Ninja Turtles at the game thing (yesterday). So, I started with John Oliver and worked my way backwards to the “no print at home” ground zero…including the Lonn Trost on Boomer and Carton mess. In addition to the surface facts, I explained the veiled realities of what was the truth.

The more I got into it, the wider their mouth dropped. At each disclosure and turn, I got a “Are you kidding me?”

Once done, their reaction was “What a joke. The Yankees deserve to get fried for this. What an embarrassment.”

As a Yankees fan, it was impossible to defend the Yankees here. Granted, it’s the suits and not the players. But, to the man in the street, there’s no separation between the two.

How can someone walk down the street wearing a Yankees cap with pride when these bozos are always mucking it up?

Yeah, I know what some are going to say “Dude, do you remember some of the stuff Big Stein did?” Well…of course…however, at that time, at least people pushed back. Steinbrenner was booed at Yankee Stadium in every decade of the last Yankee Stadium. While he may have done something stupid at times, at least the public perception was that Yankees fans were not in line with him when he was an embarrassment.

That really doesn’t happen today. For some reason, the suits seem to get a buddy-pass in public. (The media tries to fillet them. But, it never creates a groundswell like in the days of “The Boss.”) And, it really makes it hard to be a Yankees fan these days.

OK, I get it when it comes to Ken Griffey, Cal Ripken, Sandy Alomar and Jose Cruz. Shoot, I even get it when it comes to Tim Raines, Tony Gwynn, John Mayberry, Eric Young, Gary Matthews, and Tony Pena. Taking it further, I get it when you’re throwing in Pete Rose, Ed Sprague, Roy Smalley and Steve Lombardozzi.

But, seriously, why do we care that Jackie Bradley is a Jr.? And, why must it be denoted, even on his uniform that he is a Jr.?

Putting it another way: Who is Jackie Bradley Sr.? Did he ever play and/or coach in professional baseball?

Now that the Yankees season is basically done, I thought “Maybe now it’s time for a plan…to see what you have?”

Out of the chute, I figured “Release Joba Chamberlain. He’s gone, no matter what, in two months. You don’t want him back. And, he’s not going to help you any from here out. And, even if he did, so what? It’s not like you have a shot for October?”

And, then, once that roster spot is open, call up J.R. Murphy and then have him and Austin Romine split catching duties for the rest of the season and see if maybe you have an in-house catching option for 2014.

Next, look at the starting rotation. Is there any reason to keep giving Phil Hughes a regular turn? There’s nothing to see there – you know what he is and will always be. Plus, odds are, you’re not keeping him beyond this season. Why not move him to the pen, to take Joba’s spot, and then call up some kid from Triple-A, or maybe even push someone at the Double-A level, and let him get some big league experience for the next six or seven weeks?

Ah, and, there, I hit the skids.

There is no one in the Yankees farm system at the Triple-A or Double-A level who warrants a call-up at this time. Zach Nuding has been hit pretty good in the minors.Brett Marshall has been hammered. Ditto Caleb Cotham. Who does that leave, Jose Ramirez? Is he even healthy? I don’t know. And, don’t even get me started about Michael Pineda.

And, it’s the same elsewhere. Worried about who is going to take Granderson’s spot? Not thrilled with the notion of flanking Gardner with Soriano, Wells and Ichiro in 2014? Well, there’s no Yankees outfield propsects in Triple-A or Double-A that are ready. Ramon Flores would get the bat knocked out of his hands in the majors. Slade Heathcott went backwards this season. Tyler Austin is not ready yet. Mason Williams is still stuck in A-Ball. And, we’ve already seen Melky Mesa and Zolio Almonte. Face it, the Yankees have no impact outfield prospects near being ready to help in the majors.

How about Cano? In case he leaves – and I hope that he does – should the Yankees be looking at someone now, in the system, to see if he’s ready? Who would that be, Jose Pirela? Seriously?

I won’t even talk about short and third. We’ve already seen, this season, there’s no one to help at those spots.

Yes, the Yankees stink this year. But, just wait until next season. It’s going to be worse.

The 2013 Yankees, as of close of business July 19th, are 51-45 and in 4th place in A.L. East. And, their Pythagorean W-L record is only 48-48. To be candid, the only thing saving them from being in last place at this moment is the woeful start that the Blue Jays got off to this year.

In their last 72 games, the Yankees are 36-36 and their batters BA/OBP/SLG line over those 72 games is .238/.300/.355 (in 2,647 PA). During this span, New York is averaging 3.7 runs scored per game.

Talk about being the Bronx Not-Bombers!

At some point, this has to stop, no?

Is there no one in the farm system who can help? Apparently, the answer is no…because they would have been here already. And, we’ve seen that David Adams, Austin Romine, Zoilo Almonte and Corban Joseph are not ready for prime-time players.

Yes, there have been injuries to A-Rod, Jeter, Youkilis, Granderson, Teixeira, Nix, Nunez, Cervelli and now Almonte. And, if you want to use that as an excuse, I wouldn’t object.

But, what about the point of running Lyle Overbay, Vernon Wells and Chris Stewart out there all the time? Is that the best the Yankees could find at those positions? Ditto Ichiro and Hafner. You’re supposed to get big production from your DH, 1B and corner OF positions. And, with the Yankees, this year, that’s not happening.

And, don’t even get me started about the revolving door parade of players like Brennan Boesch, Ben Francisco, Luis Cruz, Reid Brignac, Chris Nelson, Alberto Gonzalez, Thomas Neal, Brent Lillibridge and Travis Ishikawa this year. That’s a joke. Those guys belong on an Indy League roster like the Long Island Ducks before they should be wearing a Yankees uniform.

If you want to say injuries is the problem, fine. But, isn’t someone supposed to be accountable for addressing problems? And, if yes, should they not have their feet held to the fire for not having anything in the pipeline to help? Further, when their “Plan B” players – like Vernon Wells – are a total turd, shouldn’t that go on their report card too?

It’s the difference between a great pitching line and a bad one, in the end. As much as I don’t like Phil Hughes, I can’t pin today on him. Why Joe had him out there today beyond 100 pitches is anyone’s guess. I called it, sitting there. I told my son: Close game, late, you’ll see. Once he’s over 100 pitches, he’ll give up a homerun and that will be it. And, then, I was right…

Even after he returned, seemingly as healthy and as strong as ever, there was an element of concern with every swing that Mark Teixeira took. Would this one reinjure his wrist? Would the next one send him back to the disabled list?

As it turned out, Teixeira, who missed the first two months of the season, was not quite as healthy as was thought when he rejoined the Yankees on May 31, and now the rest of his season is in some doubt.

Teixeira was removed from the Yankees’ 6-2 loss to the Los Angeles Angels — their fifth straight defeat — in the fourth inning Saturday and was sent back to New York, where he will visit Dr. Christopher Ahmad on Sunday, the team said.

Manager Joe Girardi said that Teixeira did not reinjure the wrist on one swing and that he had been having difficulty generating power with it for some time. Finally it was decided to sit him down again.

This is the fourth time this season that a key Yankees player who either had seemingly recovered from an injury or was on the path to recovery has had another injury. Derek Jeter sustained a second break in his left ankle during spring training, Curtis Granderson broke his left hand only days after recovering from a broken right arm, and Kevin Youkilis, who missed a month with a back injury, had to return to the disabled list Friday with the same injury.

On March 13th, I listed two tickets for sale on the Yankees Ticket Exchange – hosted by Ticketmaster. These were for the game of April 16th against the D’backs. In order to try and sell them, I set the price as declining each day. Yet, in the two weeks they have been listed, no one has bought them.

I should add that these are great seats – in the Main Level, by first base, with one seat being an aisle seat and the other being the one next to it. In addition, they are undercover – which is great in case of rain.

Today, just for the fun of it, I looked at the interactive map on the Yankees Ticket Exchange to see how many other seats were for sale in my section. And, to my shock, I did not see my seats listed as an option. So, I quickly checked my account and confirmed that I still have them posted as being for sale. So, why are they not on the seating chart as being available? Who can possible find them as being for sale if they are not on the seating chart as marked for sale?

Of course, the Yankees Ticket Exchange is located at 7060 Hollywood Blvd in Los Angeles – and they are not available until 9 AM on the east coast. So, I have to wait to call them today. But, in the meantime, boy, am I pissed.

At this point, I can only assume they are hidden from the public, as being available, because the Yankees don’t want someone to see tickets as being available at less than face value because they were prefer to sell tickets directly as walk-ups.

Update, 9:15 AM: I spoke to Ticketmaster, who runs the Yankees Ticket Exchange site. They said that they cannot explain why my tickets have not been listed for sale over the last two weeks. They assume that maybe there was a pending sale of the tickets – although they cannot prove it – where someone’s credit card was being approved. And, during this process, the “bar codes were locked.” And, that’s why they are not showing. They’re going to look into it and get back to me.

Update, 9:30 AM: This was interesting. Seems I was looking at the Yankees interactive seating map for tickets for sale – and not the one for the Yankees Ticket Exchange. Ticketmaster called me back and gave me the URL for the Ticket Exchange. It’s www.ticketsnow.com/Yankees. But, when you go to the Yankees site, and look for tickets, you get this URL: http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/ticketing/singlegame.jsp?c_id=nyy&y=2013 – and, there’s no obvious link or mention of the Yankees Ticket Exchange. To find it, when you are on that page, you have to find the sidebar at the bottom right of the page with the header “Also In Tickets” and there, 13 links listed from the top, is a small link to the Yankees Ticket Exchange.

How someone would ever find that, is beyond me. Also, when you GOOGLE “Yankees Ticket Exchange” the first link to come up is yankees.mlb.com/TicketExchange which brings you back to the Yankees site where they are selling single game tickets at full price. So, in the end, instead of saying “Yankees Ticket Exchange Hiding Tickets For Sale?” the proper question to ask is “Yankees Hiding Yankees Ticket Exchange Site?”

Alex Rodriguez has been rehabbing his surgically repaired hip in New York and Miami throughout spring training, but is expected to join his teammates for the April 1 opener against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.

A-Rod has not started baseball activity after surgery in mid-January to repair a torn labrum and impingement in his left hip, working on a physical therapy program for the past two months.

“He’s doing everything he needs to be doing,” GM Brian Cashman said. “I’m not sure when his actual rehab-to-field-activity will take place. I don’t have that yet.”

A-Rod’s rehab will likely move to Tampa once he picks up a baseball, but Joe Girardi — who keeps in touch with A-Rod via text messaging — said he expects to see his third baseman in the Bronx on Opening Day.

“I’d like to see him,” Girardi said. “He says his rehab is going well. He feels pretty good. He’s doing more and more every week I talk to him.”

Ugh. Just what the team needs – with all the media around Opening Day, especially against the Red Sox, and A-Rod is going to turn it into a circus by finally coming out of his Biogenesis cave bunker. It should be a feeding frenzy. Of course, that’s right in the sweet spot for this narcissistic ass-clown, #13 in your Yankees program…

Every time I hear this, albeit from Cashman or a Yankees fan, I want to scream.

I like David Phelps. He’s young and a fine pitcher for the back-end of your rotation.

Hiroki Kuroda is usually good for a quality 30 starts and 200 innings. But, he will be 38-years old this season and nearing the end of his career. So, there’s some risk there. Also, for what it’s worth – and I know many don’t care about this type of stuff – for most of his career he’s been a hard luck pitcher. When that happens, over and over, there’s usually a reason for it.

CC Sabathia has thrown 1,399 innings over the last 6 seasons – an average of 233 IP per season – and is coming off elbow surgery. And, while he’s slimmer this spring, he’s still not a well conditioned player – in terms of carrying too much body fat. Sooner or later, and more likely sooner, his pitching arm is going to cry out “Uncle!”

Andy Pettitte, who is one of my all-time favorite baseball players (ever!) will be 41-years old this June. The last time he had more than 21 starts in a major league season was four years ago. The last time he won more than 14 games in a season was six years ago. So, why should we expect him to make 30 starts and win 15+ games this season at his age?

Last season, Ivan Nova faced 748 major league batters and they had a collective .511 Slugging Percentage against him. Forget what he’s doing in Spring Training. You can never trust Spring Training stats. When the bell rings, he won’t be fooling anyone – he didn’t last year.

Phil Hughes should make 30 starts, win 15+ games, and pitch close to 200 innings this year. He’s done that two of the last three years. Plus, he’s pitching for his free agency – so, there’s a carrot on the stick for him this year. But, he’s not a staff leader. He’s more a middle-to-the-back-end starting pitcher at this point in his career.

Don’t even get me started about the Dominican John Blutarsky, Michael Pineda.

“Pitching is our strength.”

Tell me that in August and September. When I see it then, I will believe it. Right now, it’s just a promise and a wish from Brian Cashman.

This concern that baseball teams have over the secondary ticket market is all about the teams trying to make money. They don’t care about the fans. Don’t be fooled by any attempts on their end to pitch this as some benefit for the fans.

If I sell my ticket in the secondary market for $1 after I paid the Yankees $85 for it, they don’t care that I am losing $84. But, what the teams do care about is that someone is buying my ticket because I am selling it for $1 – and that means, then, the person buying it is not forced to by an unsold ticket from them at $85.

That’s all this is…period.

Funny, teams used to be concerned with scalpers buying lots of tickets and then selling them for more than face value. They felt that someone was making money off them. So, they got all kinds of scalping laws out there to take care of it.

And, now, they have the reverse happening – people selling tickets for way under face value and the teams now feel that they are losing money as a result.

Teams better be careful. Before you know it, we’re going to have a situation where it’s unlawful and/or not mechanically possible to get a ticket for anything else than face value. And, when that happens, they’re going to be looking at a lot of empty seats because ticket prices – like in the case of the Yankees – are too high.

With the technology that’s out there today in terms of television broadcasts and sets to view it on, people will just elect to stay home, watch the game on their big screen, and avoid the cost and time of commuting to and from the ballpark. And, then you’re not buying any $9 beers or $7 garlic fries too.

The best solution here? Teams should sell tickets at prices that will prevent people from looking to buy them from someone else. If they did that, it would take all the power away from the secondary market.

But, what I suspect will happen is that teams will react differently – and simple go to variable ticket pricing, if they haven’t already, and then really jack up the prices of those “premium” games.

Why? Well, what’s happening now is that fans are buying some sort of season ticket package, keeping the “really good games” – either because they want them or they know they can sell them later at prices way above face value – and then selling off their crappy games – like a Tuesday night game in April against the Marlins – at crazy low prices, just to get “something” back on them.

And, it’s possible that teams may raise the prices on the “hot ticket” to make up for their perceived losses at the ticket window or to try and make it hard for buyers to re-sell those tickets at a price where it makes it worth their while to eat the cost on the “crappy” games.

But, if teams start charging tremendously higher prices on those “premium” games, then fans won’t want them as much – because they cannot afford or sell them later (and recover their cost).

This will bring the same result as fixing the ticket resale price at face value. People will just stop buying tickets and there will be more empty seats at the ballpark.

There may be other possible scenarios out there. And, many of them may also lead to more empty seats at the ballpark. That’s why teams should be careful what they wish for with the secondary ticket market.

The Yankees never led in the [ALCS], only the second time in their history that they’ve been beaten in that fashion (the other was in the 1963 World Series) and had some of their weaknesses exposed in October.

The Yankees were swept in a postseason series for the first time since the 1980 ALCS (against the Kansas City Royals), and swept in a best-of-7 for the first time since the 1976 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Lowest BA in Single Postseason
MLB History

BA

2012 Yankees

.188

1965 Twins

.195

1956 Dodgers

.195

1974 Athletics

.198

1962 Yankees

.199

1920 Dodgers

.205

1921 Yankees

.207

>>minimum 7 games

The Yankees had played 36 straight postseason series without being swept. The Elias Sports Bureau notes that is the longest such streak in major-league history.

The Yankees .188 batting average in the 2012 postseason is the lowest in MLB postseason history by any team that played at least seven games.

They scored just 22 runs in nine games, for an average of 2.4 runs per game. That’s the fourth-fewest runs per game in a single postseason by any team that played at least seven games.

How ugly was the final game?

The 8-1 loss matched the team’s worst in any postseason elimination game. They lost 9-2 to the Dodgers in Game 6 of the 1981 World Series and they lost 10-3 to the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS.

Clearly, some – if not most – of this falls on the Yankees batters, themselves. They were the ones in the box with the stick in their hand.

But, should they be the only ones held accountable here? How about Yankees batting coach Kevin Long? Is he somewhat culpable as well for failure of his star players? Also, what about Yankees G.M. Brian Cashman? He’s the one who put together the starting position players for the Yankees? Should he not also be charged for assembling a team without the skill set to produce in the post-season?

What do you think? And, what should be the course of action regarding those responsible for this epic failure?

Ichiro will not be back with New York in 2013. And, Swisher is closing out his Yankees career with a turd…his typical post-season performance.

Cano? He bats six-fifteen against scrubs to close out the season and then becomes a non-factor in the post-season. What does that say about him?

A-Rod, hey, what can you say? From this point forward, in Yankeeland, he’s Eric Soderholm, Toby Harrah, or Charlie Hayes. He’s your right-handed batting third baseman who should hit in the lower end of the line-up and be lifted when facing a tough righty pitcher. The sooner he gets that into his head, accepts it, and starts to carry himself as that type of player, the better for him and everyone else.

Lastly, Granderson. Well, I never was a fan. I always thought he had too many holes in his swing. And, I knew that the Tigers unloaded him for a reason. At this point, a smart G.M. would shop him this winter. Pitch him to the sabermetric-inclined front offices. Talk about the homeruns and the fact that he’s not tied up long-term, maybe even offer to throw in some money. Anything to get him off the team. But, the Yankees G.M. is Brian Cashman, the one who was suckered into trading multiple young, cheap, and useful players to get Granderson. So, expect Granderson to be a Yankee in 2013 too – and, get ready for that 200-strikeout season from him.

You can’t blame the lack of Yankees offense so far this ALDS on Jeter, Teixeira or Martin. But, for sure, the rest of this team has been terrible. And, it’s time for the Yankees to start dealing with that…